Mao’s ‘Great Leap Forward’ and the Power of History
We have known for some time that Mao Zedong, founder of the People’s Republic of China, was one of the last century’s most brutal and vicious mass murderers. In 2005, Jung Chang and Jon Halliday’s biography of Mao was published in this country to wide acclaim, and for the first time, many of the myths surrounding his rise to power and the nature of his rule after 1949 were brought to light. The authors estimated that Mao “was responsible for over 70 million deaths in peacetime, more than any other twentieth-century leader.” My own discussion of their findings can be read here.
One period they covered was Mao’s “Great Leap Forward,” his attempt to rapidly industrialize China in the five years between 1958 and 1962. Chang and Halliday had argued that not only did the program fail; it produced mass starvation, with areas of China resorting to cannibalism. Peasants and city dwellers alike were forced to build home steel furnaces, and all metal implements — including pots and pans used for cooking — were to be smelt, turning each home into a mini local steel producing factory. Mao also ordered that all sparrows be killed, since they ate grain. The “bourgeois” bird was condemned; the result was the upsetting of nature’s ecological balance, as pests and other birds once killed by sparrows began to attack crops. Before long, Mao was asking the Soviet Union to send them 200,000 sparrows from the Soviet Far East.
Mao had said: “Half of China may well have to die,” and he was prepared for such an outcome. It almost came true. Thirty-eight million people died of starvation and overwork during the Leap and the subsequent famine, which lasted for four long years. This greatest of 20th century manmade famines exceeded the deaths caused by Stalin’s collectivization of the Ukraine. As Mao told his staff, “50 million (might have to) die … you can’t blame me when people die.”
Now Frank Dikötter, a historian who lives in Hong Kong, has written the first major book about these disastrous years, which Dikötter calls “one of the worst catastrophes the world has ever known.” It is titled Mao’s Great Famine: The History of China’s Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-1962. Using regional archives in rural areas, he has unearthed many gruesome details. A British newspaper covered the author’s recent book talk, noting that Dikötter “compared the systematic torture, brutality, starvation and killing of Chinese peasants to the Second World War in its magnitude. At least 45 million people were worked, starved or beaten to death in China over these four years; the worldwide death toll of the Second World War was 55 million.”
Calling the period a virtual war between the peasant and the State, Dikötter said: “It ranks alongside the gulags and the Holocaust as one of the three grimmest events of the 20th century. … It was like [the Cambodian communist dictator] Pol Pot’s genocide multiplied 20 times over.” It is not only a period that official China has conveniently forgot — wiped out of the historical memory of China’s newly prosperous populace — but of course it is one also forgot by those legions of American leftists who in those years maintained that Mao and the Chinese Communists were successfully creating a new world.
The records Dikötter found revealed:
State retribution for tiny thefts, such as stealing a potato, even by a child, would include being tied up and thrown into a pond; parents were forced to bury their children alive or were doused in excrement and urine, others were set alight, or had a nose or ear cut off. One record shows how a man was branded with hot metal. People were forced to work naked in the middle of winter; 80 per cent of all the villagers in one region of a quarter of a million Chinese were banned from the official canteen because they were too old or ill to be effective workers, so were deliberately starved to death.
All of this raises the question of what this means for the people of today’s China, whose real history is carefully hidden from them by the Party’s leaders. As we read of the great progress China has made in the past few decades, it is tempting to think that China is no longer what anyone would call a Communist state — since it is so far removed from these horrible events of Mao’s day.
Thank you for bringing up the subject of Maoism and directing us to a new and well-researched source.
Much as I respect VDH’s scholarly parallels with ancient Greco-Roman conflict, their remoteness in time and vague whiff of British public school superiority, weaken their message for Americans who have been deliberately untutored in even the history of the past two centuries. Calling attention to the disasters brought upon major nations by devotees of Marx and Lenin should probably be a more effective 2×4 on the forehead of today’s generation.
Numbers of Obama’s close associates openly pay tribute to Mao Tse Tung as a model for political leadership and unswerving dedicated purpose. Aware of his appalling acceptance of the annihalation of 45 million of his own people, and his assertion that he would be willing to accept the death of 50% of the population, they nevertheless applaud his style of governance and are willing to emulate it. In some individuals, literally.
Weakened by education focussed on social activism, compassion, multicullturalism moral equivalence, and national self-denigration, most Americans can’t bring themselves to believe that we have elected an administration that has no qualm – in fact, is eager – to bring about the collapse of our capitalist economy, and anyone more attendant death-toll, in order to achieve their patriotic goal: to change the nation into a Maoist republic.
You’d better believe it! They do not perceive this term as a party shift. Compromise = Defeat. Give no quarter. You lost, we won – and we’re not about to give it up. Viva la Revolucion! as Bill Ayers says.
Our new constitution is all there, in Mao’s little Red Book.
I wouldn’t say that they have really gained controlled over capitalism or found some really need way of making collectivism work… what they’ve done is use a classic that has been used by hitler, stalin and others… they drain the “rich”. For hitler is was stealing from the jews, for stalin Ukraine, jews, host of others. China’s boost is mostly due to the massive stealing of tech and massive foreign aid that flows into it not from some reinvented form of economics. The main difference between a china and a USSR is the fact that they are pushing the espionage side harder, espionage security is lax combined with the UN forcing the giving away of high tech and that china is much father behind us then the USSR was at the time.
This is the main reasons why they’ve seen great success… not some overly different economics approach.
You make a good point. A news story yesterday reported on a small company in Beijing which is quite blatantly producing copies of iphones and aping Apple’s marketing down to a mock Steve Jobs. The Chinese have no shame in the theft of design or production processes, any more than they have in open bribery. Their government postures in formal trade relations but makes no effort to curb it.
They are an entrepreneurial trading people, skilled in production, and educate clever engineers. But they direct the efforts of those engineers towards building on stolen technology rather than encouraging the creation of new and innovative products, military or consumer. It is not a uniquely Chinese approach. There is a motto in western business practice: Let the other guy do the product development and take the lumps of creating the market, and then move in. That is their strategy, but it means that they will always lag behind us.
Our problem is that, however successfully we guard against espionage, once we have put a product on the market there is no way we can prevent them from copying it. Leaking prototypes with a fatal defect in them doesn’t provide a worthwhile advantage.
Yeah this is basically what the chinese are doing. The USSR failed because when we(US v USSR) competed it was direct. Basically both countries built sports cars and kept building sports cars. In this direct match up where we started out with roughly the same tech level the US slowly destroyed the USSR because in a direct match up they could never hope to build a better sports car.
China on the other hand accepts that currently it is “weaker”. They don’t care about building a sports car to match the US’s sports cars right now they care about stealing everything on our sports car and just attaching it to theirs. They understand that while they currently can’t build a sport car as good as ours, by stealing everything off it they can make a half decent sports car for 1/10th the price… then add in they can get the US government/UN to even chip in some money so they can build it even cheaper. China is at best 1970s tech levels.
When they reach a late 80s tech level they will be very very dangerous to the US. More so since the US is spending 100s of billions of dollars are useless junk science like global warming. Combined with cuts in military R&D and our research has been slowing greatly in recent years and failing to produce useful products and advancing our knowledge in weapons and defense.
This is one of the reason why when I hear ppl talk about reducing the defense budget I want to go over and slap them… our defense budget is where a huge amount of useful R&D/research is paid for… unlike the waste of billions that go down the black hole of global warming propaganda creation.
Well then. If it’s true that a 9-man Politburo can be pictured as above as successful at ‘wisely guiding’ China’s hybrid Leninist-capitalism economic success, and maintaining absolute political control as it does so, then why shouldn’t our domestic authoritarian wannabes in the United States take note, and do their best to clone the system into this country with themselves, of course, at the top?
On the hopeful side, the power of the Communist Party authorities is no longer absolute. The Christian faith is spreading rapidly. This always dilutes and erodes away the authority of any earthly power that seeks to set itself up as the be-all and end-all.
Indeed, it’s the one thing I’m hopeful about in China. I personally think the numbers are a little on the high side, but by some estimates 10,000 Chinese become Christian every day, despite the ongoing heavy persecution by the government. It’s strange to think that in 50 years China, the up-coming super power, could be as Christian as America was 100 years ago.
China projects a nice facade, but every decade or so someone dares to peek behind the curtain, whether it is someone like Simon Leys in his 1977 work “Chinese Shadows,” in which Leys dared to notice that Western reporters and scholars of China were run around the same route of “Potemkin village” sites, there to be told of the glories of China and how satisfied they were by the same very carefully vetted and selected Chinese respondents; and woe to the Westerner who reported otherwise, for their access to China would be cut off, and if you are assigned to report on China or are a “China scholar,” how can you have a career if you have no access to or contacts in China?
Then, there was Stephen Mosher, a PhD candidate at Stanford who did research in Guangdong province and traveled into remote, forbidden Guizhou province without permission, and researched and reported on the brutal forced abortion policies of the Chinese, documented in his 1983 book “Broken Earth.” For his temerity and insolence, Mosher was banned from reentry into China, and expelled from Stanford’s PhD program–supposedly for some sort of scholarly ethics violation or something–at the insistence of the Chinese government (which threatened Stanford scholar’s access to China if their wishes were not granted). As I recall, Mosher reported that in Guizhou province he rarely even saw any worked metal objects—wooden plow blades, not metal–and that electricity was (sometimes) available for only a few hours on alternating days.
Thinking about what things must really be like away from the major cities in China—a few gigantic cities like Beijing and Shanghai and then the rest of China’s cities which, when you look at the numbers are, surprisingly, much, much smaller in population but many in number—vs. the primitive, impoverished countryside, where the vast majority of Chinese reside, I was amazed to read a few years ago that the door to door cosmetic giant Avon had signed an agreement with Chinese authorities that would allow its representatives to sell cosmetics door to door in major Chinese cities. Yeah, that is going to do a lot of good.
This latest book about the horrors of the “Great Leap Forward” is another vitally needed peek behind the façade that China and its proponents and fans have very deliberately and carefully constructed, and at the very different, actual, reality.
Anyone interested in the truth about Mao, China and the Communists should obtain a copy of Mao by Jung Chang, Alfred Knopf, 2005. Mao, the greatest mass murderer in history, and certified hero of the Left, outdid Stalin and Hitler. But who’s counting?
I’d like to take issue with the slamming of VDH. The comments are unwarranted. Greco- Roman history is not particularly taught in schools. This has freed up an audience that does not come pre- bored to tears- un-stultified. Different cable channels have taken up making exhaustive documentary series about the Greeks, Romans, and Barbarians. There are more user- friendly translations of greek histories and works than ever. I know this not because I watch them, or read them, but because my sons- young ones, not teenagers- watch them. Then their friends watch them. They find them far more interesting and exciting than the milksop history of powerlessness and despair retailed in school. They read a redacted Anabasis ( The Sea) and then passed it around to their friends. They use my laundry basket lids as shields, and their little star wars lightsabers and swords…they read D’aulaire’s myths. they read about roman expansions, roman roads, stories about legionnaries.
I was stuck learning bits and pieces of history in school. I escaped into fantasy. they are stuck learning bits of fantasy, and they escape into real history. VDH is relevant, vibrant, and, btw, one of the historians on their education cleverly disguised as a cable video entertainment.
The evidence is undeniable that if you lived in a Communist nation, you were personally safer if that nation was at war against foreign “enemies” rather than when it was at “peace”.
In this instance, I would observe that nothing remotely like the Maoist mainland Sinocide occurred on Taiwan, controlled as it was by the “corrupt” Kuomintang.
Mao, the “Great Helmsman” whose policies led to the extinction of nearly 50 million human beings, is considered humanity’s greatest butcher. Comparatively, Stalin and Hitler were mere pikers. What an honor! No wonder the Progressives appointed by our “President” to transform our nation idealize him!
Anita Dunn, esteemed colleague of the Obama team, described Mao as one of her favorite philosophers, revealing her abysmal ignorance of that field of intellectual endeavor, not to mention her ideological predilection. To call Mao a philosopher is somewhere way beyond the other side of ridiculous. There is no evidence whatever that Mao ever even read one book on philosophy, never commented on any philosophical issue, not even ones commonly discussed within Marxism, not even Lenin’s book on philosophical materialism. A whopping 50 pages or so to explain materialism –that practice comes before theory– and dialectics –that everything contains contradiction. Wow! What a genius! Mao was also a complete ignoramus on economics; never read anything on it, nor showed the slightest interest. Never had anything to say about Marx’s economic theories, nor Lenin’s theory of imperialism. Mao did bother to study military strategy and tactics, but was really interested in only one thing –brainwashing– a term he embraced enthusiastically, meaning, for him, the purification of minds soiled by the exploiting classes.
Chang’s biography of Mao reveals that, far from being a deep thinker, Mao actually was “intellectually incurious,” possessed a very shallow mind, and was in fact bored by discussions of party philosophy or of Marxism. A sheer lust for power coupled with an insatiable ruthlessness were his keys to leadership. Anyone claiming to appreciate Mao as a philosopher either knows little of the topic or is merely mouthing inane and insulting platitudes to the 20th century’s greatest mass murderer.
China is a generic totalitarian state and the adjective Fascist applies. Fascism is no more then a collectivist social-cultural-political theory used by a small clique to control a nation. Socialism adds a specific form of faux economics to the theory and as result falls under its own weight.
Following Sorel, Mussolini’s genius was to understand the collectivism has little to do with economics and is quite compatible with quasi market based economics.
So everything Ron Radosh says about China is true but the adjective communist should no longer be applied to them. We should call them what they are…Fascists. Doing so will restore accuracy to the language while at the same time demoralizing the so-called progressive left by forcing them to see that they are what they claim to abhor, i.e., Fascists.
I fully agree with tdiinva! I was planning, before I read this comment, to make the same points as paragraphs 1 and 3.
The adjective communist should no longer be applied to the totalitarian Chinese State. We should call them what they are…Fascists. Doing so will restore accuracy to the language while at the same time demoralizing the so-called progressive left by forcing them to see that they are what they claim to abhor, i.e., Fascists.
Why does every review of this book pretend this is a “first”? Does no one remember Hungry Ghosts, by Jasper Becker? It only appeared a scant twelve years ago.
China’s economy is the world’s biggest financial Potemkin Village.
The problem with letting government, any government, make purely political decisions is that government is inevitably the worst distributor of capital. China’s economy will be collapsing in the very near future and people who praised its economic model will be backpedaling furiously, explaining how they all saw the weaknesses in the Chinese model.
Don’t be that guy.
The current crop of Communists is more productive and creates less starvation, but their approach is no less doomed to failure than Mao’s was.
“Rather than declining in power as the economy grows, the Party seemingly has perfected a mechanism to maintain control while it presides over a controlled capitalism.”
I believe their is a term for that style of gov’t: fascism.
I have a small farm in China and have lived there a number of years. Most people still believe that the famine and death of the Leap were caused by “bad weather”. I’ve had old people tell me that they would leave the house in the morning and just lie in the sun outside, since they didn’t have enough energy to do anything else. The contradiction doesn’t occur to them.
Things have improved in China, to an amazing degree, both economically and politically. I can definitely say that in my area of countryside, the peasants do push back vigorously against government interference. I find that compared to living in my native, socialist Western country, I suffer less government intrusion in my life inside China. At the individual level, it is actually more laissez faire there.
From what I’ve seen I feel they are moving away from using Mao as justification for being the ruling party. Maybe in 50 years they will break entirely from him, or maybe sooner.
I know that makes me sound like an apologist. I think my point is to bear in mind that China is freaking enormous, what is true for one area, will be very different in another. At the federal level, yes it is very much a Party owned state, at the local level, it can be quite different. But regardless, it is changing. The people need help to manage that change, not criticism that gets their backs up.
For sure I’ll be buying the book though.
Anyone who has done business in China knows full well that the Party controls all business and businesses. Heads of companies are placed there by the Party and the Party controls all negotiations. And everything must be approved by the Party heirarchy (and successful deals are celebrated with high Party dignitaries). Completion of business deals is done in ceremonies with the party officials.
And the story about Avon is more complicated. I have no inside information on the precise details, but Avon on its own recruited armies of sales people in its usual fashion throughout China. The Party officials banned Avon for fear they were creating a “cult” of people who would be a threat to the government as has happened throughout China’s history. They outlawed Avon’s way of organizing “pyramids” of local people. Avon’s agreemeent with the Party was to resolve that issue and allow Avon to resume doing business.
I knew a covert Christian missionary to China almost 20 years ago. This individual went to China for one reason – to convert Chinese to Christianity – while ostensibly performing cultural/technical exchange. God bless such brave folk, and may they succeed beyond their wildest dreams.
China faces enormous problems in demographics and in misallocation of resources, typical of central planning. There are enormous buildings in Chinese cities that are empty and have no prospect of tenants. There is a huge empty shopping mall in Shanghai. The prosperity in China is along the coastal rim but huge areas of the interior are still functioning at 1900 levels.
While they often complain about corruption and the weakness of property rights, China’s urban middle class has no desire for any political reform that might lead to democracy. China has a billion poor people indoctrinated with Maoist class-envy. If they get the right to vote, China’s experiment with free markets and private property is over.
Chang’s biography of Mao reveals that, far from being a deep thinker, Mao actually was “intellectually incurious,” possessed a very shallow mind, and was in fact bored by discussions of party philosophy or of Marxism.
This is the norm when it comes to statist political systems. It’s an historical truism that the Left will never – it seems – be able to grasp. Put simply: heavily centralized, bureaucratic govt movements always move through 3 stages: the ideological phase, followed by the “Party First!” phase, ending in the brute phase. In the end, the brutes always end up in control, not the intellectuals. Why? Two reasons: 1) Ideological movements eventually begin to run up against reality, and when that happens, 2) the locus of control in those movements begin to shift from those who pursue ideas to those who pursue power. As another 20th century “man of the people” put it:
Statist movements invariably choose ideology over reality. Once they start down that path, tyranny is inescapable because what’s rewarded is loyalty to party, not achievement of philosophical aims. What is really frightening is that one can witness this phenomena right now, with the Democrats. We’ve had nearly 100 years of Leftist “social engineering” in the US and what has it gotten us?
Social Security? Broke.
Medicare/Medicaid? Broke.
Welfare safety net? The utter destruction of the black community.
Education? Trillions spent, no statistical change in scores in 50 years.
Wealth redistribution? A manufacturing exodus spurred by high taxation, unionism, and wage controls.
Culture? Coarsening by the minute, producing generations of young people with majorities wanting to be rock stars, movie actors, and professional atheletes rather than doctors, lawyers, or scientists.
We have daily revelations about some new unethical or illegal activity by Dem politicians or activists…and those revelations are purposefully ignored, actively buried, or demagogued as some “-ism” or another . These are sure signs of a political movement that is intellectually exhausted and thoroughly ensconced in the “Party First!” phase. If we allow them to continue with their “transformation” of America, it’s only a matter of time before the brutes show up.
A sheer lust for power coupled with an insatiable ruthlessness were his keys to leadership.
I recently had an excellent discussion regarding this very topic – i.e., the “will to power” of the Left – in another thread. If you’re so inclined, check it out here.
It’s my impression that the Chinese people, in the back of their minds, are well aware of the Party’s willingness to inflict pain and suffering on them.
From the Revolutionary war to the Great Leap, from the Cultural Revolution to the Tienanmen Square massacre, every generation have experienced this cruelty, hitting their parents, siblings or children. The level of violence needed to keep the population docile and frightened have gone down as a result of this cross-generational experience. The Chinese people know what the Party is capable of.
1/ Those who do fail to learn from their history are domed to repeat it:- sometime, someone in China will repeat at least some of the mistakes of the Mao years
2/ What is the structure of the party:- are the views of a large number of party members taken into consideration when making decisions, or are they all top down. If the latter we can expect to see a considerable reduction (or even partial reversal) in China’s recant phenomenal growth in the next decade or so- top down governance always fails, as the person at the top lacks the knowledge to make the right decisions- and is at least partly concerned with maintaining his position giving him less time to actually govern. Furthermore the person at the top is very likely to be most gifted at beating his rivals, which is not the gift best suited to good governance.
3/ Maintaining privilege for a tenth of the population consumes resources beyond those actually received by the privileged- if the communist party remains in a position of privilege it will act as a drag on the economy.
4/ Whilst there is no doubt that China has prospered since the end of Mao (starting from a very low base) are we confident that the figures produced by the Chinese Government are reliable? They are certainly doing well, but are they doing as well as they tell us they are?
Sure, 70 million died but this is how the Chinese culture likes it. They eschew individual freedom in the name of “the common good.” They have a hive-like mentality and will endure absolutely anything if they thing it will move them closer to genetic domination of the planet.
This is why they are content to succomb to the notion of “a thousand year perspective” to any goal. Everything, including themselves, are dispensible for the next 999 years so long as in year 1,000 they are dominant and victorious.
Think this is hyperbole? Imagine where your brain has to be to allow the government TO MURDER YOUR CHILDREN in the name of public policy AND YOU SIT BACK AND ALLOW IT TO HAPPEN.
This self-sacrificing mentality for the common good is, of course, completely self-defeating since everything you hope to achieve in year 1000 is dependent on the progress you make in the proceding 999 years.
You absolutely don’t know what you are talking about. Read some history books before you open your mouth.
Well, sorry, people, but I have to disagree a bit. The article makes some good points, but really misses the mark on others. First of all, I own and have read Jung Chang’s excellent biography of Mao. If it is even 50% true (and I have not yet been able to establish the extent to which it is), Mao was indeed the foremost mass murderer (and just plain scumbag) of the 20th century.
I have spent a lot of time studying China and traveling there. I have many Chinese friends and colleagues, and I speak Chinese (but not with native proficiency, by any means), and my experience really contrasts with the author’s statements, which seem to be based only on his reading of a couple of books.
The author of this article claims that we have to make known to the Chinese their “true” history. I think that is really just nonsense. The Chinese people, at least the ones that I know, are well aware of their “true” history. They lived it! They, especially the older generation, know of the brutality and suffering in detail. The fact is, however, that THEY DON’T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT. They understand that the CCP will not be challenged, and that those that do challenge the party do not have a happy result, in most cases. They would much rather just get along with their lives and do their best to be happy – just like people everywhere that have been through traumatic experiences. Few people want to re-live their trauma – whether they are war veterans in the US or Chinese villagers brutalized by the CCP’s “re-education” teams.
One other point: it is really dismaying to read the blatantly racist stuff being written here. E.g. “Sure, 70 million died but this is how the Chinese culture likes it.” That is just complete and utter racist crap, and whoever wrote it should be ashamed. You may not agree with the politics and policies of the CCP (I most certainly don’t), but to say that the Chinese people and culture *likes* that 70 million of their *family members and friends* died (the number is high, but hey, what’s a few million Chinese, right?), is just about the most ignorant, racist, xenophobic nonsense I’ve ever read anywhere.
I’ve been fortunate enough to travel to many different parts of the world, including China, and in my experience, the Chinese people I have met, including immigrants to the US and those in China, are almost without exception, hard-working, polite, fun, intelligent, and tolerant. They enjoy talking with and befriending Americans and admire the US. So please, disagree with the politics and policies of the Chinese government, but stop with the racist nonsense. It just undermines whatever relevant point you are trying to make – and besides, it’s really disgusting.
“…it is really dismaying to read the blatantly racist stuff being written here.”
Welcome to PJM!
The problem is that the rest of the world’s economies are so intertwined with that of China, any threat to the stability of China will spell doom for the global market. A cultural revolution in China is guaranteed to bring the entire structure down. Sadly, even a sneeze could do so, as they artificially inflate their currency and employment to appear stronger than their market truely is. Basically, the world economy is resting on a house of cards, and revolution or collapse is emminently going to knock it over.
As is mentioned in the fist paragraph, this information isn’t exactly new. These books add some emotion and color but do they elevate the outrage that has been conspicuously absent when the subject of Mao comes up? He’s a hero of the left!
Uber-lefties are no better than Uber-righties but the stigma sticks on the right and not the left. Perhaps a more effective marketing team on the left? It will be interesting to see if books like this and blogs like this make any meaningful change to the long term narrative of Mao.
I like this comment.
It’s my impression that the Chinese people, in the back of their minds, are well aware of the Party’s willingness to inflict pain and suffering on them.
From the Revolutionary war to the Great Leap, from the Cultural Revolution to the Tienanmen Square massacre, every generation have experienced this cruelty, hitting their parents, siblings or children. The level of violence needed to keep the population docile and frightened have gone down as a result of this cross-generational experience. The Chinese people know what the Party is capable of.
“Rather than declining in power as the economy grows, the Party seemingly has perfected a mechanism to maintain control while it presides over a controlled capitalism.”
I believe their is a term for that style of gov’t: fascism. – I agree by 100 percent.
I’ve an relative who is Chinese, and he have told me everything about Mao and the great catasthrope he caused. According to my relative, this man suffered from narcissistic personality disorder.
What is the structure of the party:- are the views of a large number of party members taken into consideration when making decisions, or are they all top down. If the latter we can expect to see a considerable reduction (or even partial reversal) in China’s recant phenomenal growth in the next decade or so- top down governance always fails, as the person at the top lacks the knowledge to make the right decisions- and is at least partly concerned with maintaining his position giving him less time to actually govern. Furthermore the person at the top is very likely to be most gifted at beating his rivals, which is not the gift best suited to good governance.
Mao…
Although still poorly understood, the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) was, in many respects, Mao’s most far-reaching attempt to rid China of his supposed opponents. Unlike Stalin, who remained in firm control of the Soviet party from the 1920s, Mao never had complete command over the CCP. Many of the campaigns from 1957 onward were attempts to increase his political control over the party. However, once Mao realized by the mid-1960s that his quest for undisputed leadership had been stymied, he turned to forces outside the CCP to attack what he considered a reticent party unwilling to implement his erratic policies. The Cultural Revolution was a mixture of party purge and class warfare, during which radicalized students persecuted, humiliated, tortured, and even murdered alleged rightists or counterrevolutionaries. The exact number of those who were killed, committed suicide, or died in camps is not known; nonetheless, it is clear that most of the victims came from the educated strata, had party backgrounds, or were from minorities.
Thanks for bringing this information forward. I’m a Chinese decent living in the US and have no knowledge of such atrocity. History should not be hidden like this, how else are we to learn from these mistakes so not to make them again. You can’t even learn this in the history classes in the American Schools.
“…..State retribution for tiny thefts, such as stealing a potato, even by a child, would include being tied up and thrown into a pond; parents were forced to bury their children alive or were doused in excrement and urine, others were set alight, or had a nose or ear cut off….”
As a parent I find this very disturbing as to how a human can do this to another.
Things have improved in China, to an amazing degree, both economically and politically. I can definitely say that in my area of countryside, the peasants do push back vigorously against government interference. I find that compared to living in my native, socialist Western country, I suffer less government intrusion in my life inside China. At the individual level, it is actually more laissez faire there.
Mao Zedong is one of the most controversial leaders of the twentieth century. He has been known both as a savior and a tyrant to the Chinese people. From his tactical success of the Long March to his embarrassing failure of the Great Leap Forward, Mao has greatly influenced the result of what China is today. Most of Mao’s major successes have been in the CCP’s rise to power, while Mao’s failures have come at a time when the CCP was in power.
Mao is still revered as the “Founding Father of modern China” and credited for giving “the Chinese people dignity and self-respect.” For their part, the Chinese government continues to officially regard Mao as a national hero. In 2008, China opened the Mao Zedong Square to visitors in his hometown of central Hunan Province to mark the 115th anniversary of his birth.
There continue to be disagreements on Mao’s legacy. Former official Su Shachi, has opined that “he was a great historical criminal, but he was also a great force for good. “In a similar vein, journalist Liu Bin Yan has described Mao as “both monster and a genius.” Some historians claim that Mao Zedong was “one of the great tyrants of the twentieth century”
One other point: it is really dismaying to read the blatantly racist stuff being written here. E.g. “Sure, 70 million died but this is how the Chinese culture likes it.” That is just complete and utter racist crap, and whoever wrote it should be ashamed. You may not agree with the politics and policies of the CCP (I most certainly don’t), but to say that the Chinese people and culture *likes* that 70 million of their *family members and friends* died (the number is high, but hey, what’s a few million Chinese, right?), is just about the most ignorant, racist, xenophobic nonsense I’ve ever read anywhere.